High-throughput satellites (“HTS”) provide significantly more throughput than conventional fixed-satellite service satellites (“FSS”) over the same orbital spectrum. The significant increase in capacity is achieved by high level frequency re-use and spot beam technology, which enables frequency re-use across multiple narrowly focused spot beams (usually in the order of hundreds of kilometers), such as in cellular networks. However, as the demand for satellite communications continues to increase, there continues to be a need for satellites configured to provide increased throughput. Due to this ever-increasing need for bandwidth and the limitations of the radio frequency (“RF”) spectrum, increasing numbers of gateway ground stations distributed over larger regions are required, which may place gateway ground stations in undesirable geographic locations.
Accordingly, those skilled in the art continue with research and development efforts in the field of high-throughput satellite communications.